Chapter 71: River Baptism
The water wasn’t cold. Not anymore. It was a second skin, a liquid silencer, wrapping her in a sensation that was both weightless and profound. His mouth on hers was not an invitation. It was a claim.
It was hunger, pure and undiluted. His tongue plunged past her lips, tasting her, exploring with a possessiveness that stole the air from her lungs. She gasped into him, and the sound was swallowed by the river and his consuming kiss. His hands, slick and strong, slid from her hips to the soaked linen of her nightdress, gripping the fabric at her lower back. He yanked her forward, closing the last inch between them.
The hard, thick length of him pressed against her lower belly, separated only by the water and two layers of clinging cloth. A jolt, white-hot and terrifying, shot through her core. She whimpered, her own hands coming up to clutch at his shoulders. His skin was smooth stone, his muscles corded and shifting under her frantic fingers.
He broke the kiss, his breath ragged against her wet cheek. “Say it again.”
“I consent.” The words were a vapour, instantly gone.
“To what?”
“To you.” It was all she could manage.
A low, approving growl rumbled in his chest. He released her back only to grasp the neckline of her nightdress. With one brutal, downward wrench, he tore the soaked linen clean to her waist. The ruined garment hung from her hips, baring her to the waist, to the night, to his blazing golden eyes.
The air hit her skin, a shocking contrast to the water. His gaze dropped, heavy and physical as a touch. Her nipples tightened into aching points under his scrutiny.
“Fucking exquisite,” he breathed, more to himself than to her. Then his head descended.
His mouth closed over one pebbled peak, his tongue lashing it, his teeth grazing with calculated pressure. A cry tore from her throat, echoing faintly off the water. It was too much. It was nowhere near enough. He suckled deeply, one hand coming up to roughly knead her other breast, his thumb circling the taut nipple. The dual assault unmoored her. Her knees buckled. He held her up, his arm like an iron band around her back.
He switched his attention to her other breast, giving it the same ruthless worship. Her head fell back, stars spinning above the black branches. Pleasure, sharp and decadent, radiated from each pull of his mouth, coiling low and deep in her belly. A throbbing ache blossomed between her legs, a relentless, empty pulse.
“Azazel…” It was a plea, a prayer, a curse.
He lifted his head, his lips glistening. “I know what you need. You’re dripping for it. I can feel your heat through the water.”
Before she could respond, his hand plunged between them, under the water, under the tattered remains of her shift. His fingers found the soaked slit of her smallclothes, pushed the fabric aside, and drove directly into her.
She screamed. The intrusion was sudden, profound, a claiming of wet, silken flesh. He was not gentle. Two thick fingers curled inside her, stretching her, exploring her with brutal efficiency.
“So fucking tight,” he groaned against her ear, his fingers pumping. “So hot. Is this what you dream about, Princess? When you’re lying in your silken sheets? Being filled by something real?”
She couldn’t answer. Her world had narrowed to the pounding of her heart and the ruthless rhythm of his hand. His thumb found her clit, circling it with a merciless, focused pressure. Sensation detonated, a cascade of sparks behind her eyes. She thrashed in his grip, but he held her firm, working her with a demon’s precision.
“Come for me,” he commanded, his voice rough. “Come on my fingers. Now.”
The order, the sheer dominance of it, snapped the last thread of her control. Her climax ripped through her, a silent, shattering convulsion that clamped around his penetrating fingers. Wave after wave of electric pleasure left her trembling, boneless, hanging onto him as the only solid thing in a liquid universe.
As the last tremors subsided, he withdrew his hand. He brought his glistening fingers to his mouth, never breaking eye contact, and sucked them clean. The obscenity of the act made her cunt clench anew.
“Just a preview,” he said, his voice dark with promise.
He untied the sodden lacings of his own trousers, freeing himself. Her eyes dropped. He was huge, thick and veined, the head ruddy and blunt in the moonlight. A primal part of her mind registered a flicker of fear, immediately drowned in a fresh flood of pure, wanton need.
He pushed the ruined shift down over her hips until it drifted away in the current. He hooked a hand behind her knee, hiking her leg up around his hip. The position opened her utterly, vulnerable and exposed.
“Look at me,” he said.
She forced her gaze up to his. His eyes were molten gold, pupils blown wide with lust. There was no tenderness there. Only hunger, and a challenge.
He guided himself to her entrance, the broad head nudging against her sensitive, swollen flesh. He paused, a muscle ticking in his jaw.
“Last chance to run.”
She answered by tightening her leg around him, pulling herself closer.
He drove home.
The sound she made was animal, ripped from a place deeper than thought. He filled her impossibly, a stretching, burning intrusion that was pain and pleasure fused into one blinding point. He didn’t stop, didn’t gentle. He sheathed himself to the hilt inside her, his groan a shattered thing against her neck.
“Gods… you take me so well.” His voice was grit and gravel.
He began to move.
It was a slow, deep, punishing rhythm. He withdrew almost completely, then slammed back in, each thrust jarring her, making the water splash around them. The initial burn subsided, replaced by a mounting, friction-fired ecstasy. Each stroke dragged against a spot inside her that made her see stars. Her nails dug into the unyielding muscle of his back.
“Fuck,” he snarled, his pace increasing. “That’s it. Take it. Take all of me.”
His hand tangled in her hair, wrenching her head back to expose her throat. He bit down on the tender junction of her neck and shoulder, not hard enough to break skin, but enough to brand her. The sharp sting pushed her higher.
She was babbling, nonsense, pleas, his name. The world was water and heat and the relentless, driving force of him. The slap of their wet skin, their ragged breaths, the river’s murmur—it all fused into a single, raw symphony.
He shifted his angle, hiking her leg higher. The new depth was devastating. A second climax began to coil, tighter, faster, a spring wound to breaking.
“Come with me,” he ground out, his own control fraying. His thrusts became erratic, brutal, pistoning into her with a final, desperate urgency. “Now, Aurelia. Fucking come now.”
His command was the trigger. Her orgasm exploded, a silent scream tearing through her as her inner muscles clenched and fluttered around his driving cock. The intensity ripped a sob from her chest.
Feeling her convulse around him, he let go. With a guttural roar that scattered birds from the nearby trees, he buried himself deep and pulsed, jet after hot jet of his release filling her. The heat of it, the intimate claim, sent another, smaller shockwave through her trembling body.
He held her there, impaled, both of them shuddering, as the river gently rocked them.
Slowly, reality seeped back in. The chill of the water. The ache in her overused muscles. The brutal, wonderful fullness of him, still inside her.
His grip on her hair loosened, becoming almost a caress. He pressed his forehead to hers, their breaths mingling in ragged clouds. For a long moment, they simply existed in the wreckage.
When he finally softened and slipped from her body, a sense of profound emptiness followed. He kept an arm around her, steadying her as her legs threatened to fail.
Wordlessly, he swept her into his arms, carrying her out of the river and onto the bank. He laid her on his spread-out jacket, the wool scratchy against her sensitized skin. He fetched her discarded, torn shift, using the drier parts to gently, methodically, clean the evidence of their joining from her thighs.
The tenderness of the act, after the violence of their coupling, was more shocking than anything that had come before. She couldn’t speak. She just watched his focused face in the moonlight.
Finished, he pulled her against him, wrapping them both in his own dry cloak. They lay on the moss, her back to his front, his arm a heavy weight around her waist. Her body throbbed in time with her heartbeat.
She felt the hard line of the knife, still tucked against her skin where she’d hidden it, press between them. A secret. A weapon. A token.
His lips brushed the shell of her ear, his voice now hollowed out, stripped bare. “Whatever game is being played with the blight… it just became personal.”
He wasn’t talking about politics. He was talking about her. About this.
She closed her eyes. The river murmured on, holding their secrets in its dark, relentless flow. The current had pulled her under. She had no desire to fight her way back to the surface.